Why? Question about design choices.

[sigtrent]

If its damage from safety why not nerf the wizards and sorcerers into oblivion? They both do more damage than any ranged character...heck they both do more damage than any melee character.

They don't actually. While they can cast a spell that does 1200 damage, in the same time a fighter can do 1200 damage with attacks, and the fighter can do it all day long while the wizard has a limited number of uses.

HP values in DDO are inflated over PnP and it tends to weaken the casters. (spell damage is inflated in DDO as well mind you... at mid levels the casters are the DPS power houses but that changes as you get into upper levels)

Why inflate HP? Because if you didn't fights, including the big epic confrontations would be over in about 5-6 seconds. You'd barely even know what happend in said fight. To make it feel like real time, yet stick with the basic D&D rules (more or less) they had to pad out fight times by making monsters take many more shots to fell, especially the "bosses" which can have 100K HP or more.

There is no doubt it distorts the game, but that is what happens when you take a turn based rule set where playing a fight can take two hours real time, and make an action paced real time multiplayer video game from it.

I've played D&D for 20+ years and I find that while it varies here and there in the specifics, and the DDO campaign is very monty hall like, the overall feel of the classes and strategies plays out just about right. You can make tanks and glass cannons, and sneaky assassins and all the usual archetypes. Even archers work well here once you sort out how to work them up.

A lot of the decisions make some sense if you keep in mind the vision for the game. D&D rules and flavor in a fast paced action game trying to analog attacks to in game animations and events over a huge international computer network with many thousands of players playing multiple hours a day. The home town D&D game in your parlor is simply a very different situation and experience. Folks often point to Neverwinter Nights as a counter example, and its a good game, but they also changed the D&D rules significantly to suit that game's challenges and its pace was significantly slower than DDO, let you pause combat, and so forth. Its a great version of D&D (and I have played lots on computers) but I think DDO also does a pretty bang up job that appeals to a wider audience and yet delivers a lot of the core game mechanics in spirit if not in strict adherence.

[Antheal]

Lord of the Rings Online is another Turbine game and the ranged damage class there is even referred to as taking the role of "Nuker".

Why is a ranged damage-dealer a viable choice in one Turbine game and really, really, bad in another?

[Ystradmynach]

Actually, arcane archer isn't the only viable choice. To the contrary, it is probably a poor choice. The only ranger PrE that should ever be taken is Tempest -- even if you are an elven archer focused build. Your archery skills will be more than sufficient to deal with ranged DPS and your ability to fall back on Tempest TWF will enable you to fight when forced to melee.

AA rangers are still quite effective at melee, they get all the twf fighting feats plus two extra feats to spend on melee, most likely improved crit and power attack, plus enough room to take any melee enhancements, and favored enemies bonuses apply both to ranged and melee. Most importantly, the improvement to ranged combat for an AA is at least as good as the melee improvements for going tempest, while still managing to be less feat intensive. So yes, there are good reasons to take an AA PrE over a Tempest.

Anyway, as to the comparison between ranged characters and wizards/sorcerers or other nukers, the idea with the latter is that they have limited resources which should cut down on their potential damage in the long run. If a warlock was created as a player class in DDO for example, you can bet that their damage output would be comparable to what an Arcane Archer could do, and not like a wizard who has infinite mana.

[Therigar]

Lord of the Rings Online is another Turbine game and the ranged damage class there is even referred to as taking the role of "Nuker".

Why is a ranged damage-dealer a viable choice in one Turbine game and really, really, bad in another?

LOTRO is a different game. It isn't Turbine's ability, it is the game's design and focus.

I bought the lifetime subscription to LOTRO and I never play it because it is just plain boring. I don't like the questing lines, the combat ....

It is geared to a different audience with different likes.

So, what goes on in LOTRO should have nothing to do with DDO.

[Therigar]

AA rangers are still quite effective at melee, they get all the twf fighting feats plus two extra feats to spend on melee, most likely improved crit and power attack, plus enough room to take any melee enhancements, and favored enemies bonuses apply both to ranged and melee. Most importantly, the improvement to ranged combat for an AA is at least as good as the melee improvements for going tempest, while still managing to be less feat intensive. So yes, there are good reasons to take an AA PrE over a Tempest.

If that is what you choose to believe there is nothing I can do to stop you from making that mistake. Good luck with it.

[Angelus_dead]

Why has the relationship between ranged and melee combat been changed so much from 3.0 -3.5 rules?

Short core answer: Because DDO is a real-time game, which necessitated different relative movement speeds which would have seriously overpowered ranged combat if it were left as-is.

To see how this is, go into a D&D 3.5 encounter and try to "kite" or "perch" the enemies. Test if that works at all.

[Angelus_dead]

Why is a ranged damage-dealer a viable choice in one Turbine game and really, really, bad in another?

Two answers for that:

1. Game programming is hard. Making ranged DPS work effectively in DDO (and not breaking something else) would be a seriously challenging task.

2. LOTRO is a simpler game in many ways. It does not allow the same kinds of free movement as in DDO, so the developers have more control over what happens in combat and it's easier for them to make changes. In addition, the LOTRO rules are totally the choice of Turbine, unlike the DDO rules which are obligated to follow the old D&D books as much as they can.